


Too Little Time

by ncfan



Series: Hurt/Comfort Prompts [2]
Category: Herbert West - Reanimator - H. P. Lovecraft, LOVECRAFT H. P. - Works
Genre: Curtain Fic, Domestic Fluff, Fainting, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:34:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26130466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: Autumn was a busy time for them, and some things were bound to slip. [Prompt #1: Fainting]
Relationships: Narrator (Herbert West - Reanimator)/Herbert West
Series: Hurt/Comfort Prompts [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1885060
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	Too Little Time

**Author's Note:**

> [ **CN/TW** : period-typical child labor; period-typical unsafe working conditions; mentions of self-harming behavior by a child to avoid having to go to work in those unsafe conditions; references to long periods gone without food/obliquely referenced disordered eating; references to period-typical classism and racism]
> 
> Prompt #1: Fainting

Autumn was a time of many mixed emotions, enough so that Herbert rarely examined them too closely, for fear of them rendering him incapable of working as he needed. Last year, summer had clung to the valley for far longer than it had any right to expect a welcome, and the brutal, sweltering heat might not have spawned the epidemic by itself, but there could be no doubt that it had exacerbated the effect. There could be no doubt that many of the bodies already beginning to stink with putrefaction by the time they were put in the ground, for the gravediggers were hardly _immune_ , and they were subjected to greater exposure than nearly anyone, and thus after a certain point in time, there were not enough men to put the corpses in the ground in a timely fashion (and truth be told, Herbert had not complained at the time, but he did remember it now as a sign of the state that Arkham had been in, and a wretched sign, at that), would still be living and ambulatory if such intense heat had not been piled on as one of the things they had to deal with. Summer brought its own memories with it, and Herbert, who still became agitated when his skin began to itch unexpectedly, had many emotions tied to the previous summer that he did not particularly wish to examine.

(Some were more pleasant. Some had been _very_ pleasant. But they were overshadowed, as they must always be overshadowed, by— By so many things.)

By the time the previous autumn had finally prevailed against a summer determined to outstay its welcome, Herbert and Stephen had no longer been in Arkham. It had been… such a _relief_ to get out of Arkham, and if Stephen did not still properly grasp why, then Herbert would let him go on not fully understanding why. Some things were too close, so close that gaining enough distance to explain them properly was a process not unlike flaying yourself. And no, it wasn’t particularly _safe_ for him to know so little as he did, but this was another line, as well, and that line was the line past which you had too _much_ knowledge for your own safety, and it was difficult to be a good judge of how much to know was too much to know when what happened to those who knew too much was—

They were not in Arkham anymore. Herbert reminded himself of that, often. On occasion, Stephen had to remind him of that as well. They were not in Arkham anymore. They had left it behind them. As long as it did not attempt to follow them all the way to the outskirts of Bolton, that ought to be enough.

By the time the previous autumn had finally arrived, too-short as it might have been, Herbert and Stephen had been here, in Bolton. While Herbert had often had cause to regret having bought the house they now lived in so quickly (confiding in Isabelle had been a _mistake_ ; he did not know what mad impulse had driven him to confide his frustrations in his cousin, but her response had been all too predictable—and infuriating), he did not regret leaving Arkham behind him as soon as he was able. Leaving Arkham behind had been such a relief that even if he had had to go live in one of the tiny hovels the Bolton Worsted Mills called a ‘house’ in the mill village, he would not have regretted it.

Summer had been murderous. Autumn had brought with it its own difficulties.

Complacent he had been, perhaps. No, there was no ‘perhaps’ about it. Herbert had been consumed with the move, with the early problems with the house (which would soon spiral into ever greater problems once winter struck down upon them, but that was another story, and hopefully one which would not find a twin this year once the leaves were gone from naked trees and the first snows came down from the north), with soliciting patients and monitoring the potter’s field, with the mingled sweetness and trepidation of a newborn shift in his relationship with Stephen, even if it was overshadowed by so many things. No one particularly liked to think about the typhoid outbreak in the Miskatonic Valley (Arkham had been among the worst hit, but the rest of the valley had hardly been _spared_ , and there were towns in the valley that had fared even worse—though given that one of those was _Innsmouth_ , hmm, mixed feelings, indeed) even while it was _happening_. Once it had run its course and the shadow of death had for a time receded from this place, everyone had been entirely too content to do what they did with every last _incident_ to strike at them, and keep the knowledge in the back of their minds to be dragged out when it was relevant once more, and in the meantime, do all they could to forget it.

Herbert was, in the end, a child of the Miskatonic Valley. In many respects, he tried not to be, but all his attempts eventually ran to nothing, though some of them took longer to do so. Considering the role he had played in Arkham during the outbreak, he was unlikely _ever_ to truly forget what had happened, but he had for the moment put it from his mind. He had done so happily. He had had so many other things to occupy his attention, so many other things that, had he allowed them to run away from him, would have destabilized his life considerably. He had not been thinking too hard on the more unpleasant aspects of the recent past.

But it was only logical, was it not? There had been so many who had died, and so many more who had fallen ill with typhoid, and then eventually recovered. Just because you recovered from something, did not mean you were going to walk away from it completely unscathed, with no lasting effects. Herbert himself had spent most of autumn battling mild chills and bouts of weakness, only to fall seriously ill for about a week or so come December. But long before that point, during the entirety of the short, blustery autumn, while Herbert was still contending with coughing fits and chills that left him irritable and left Stephen hovering over him in marked concern, he was hardly the _only_ one falling sick.

In a macabre sort of way, Herbert supposed he should have been grateful for it. Regardless of what might have been drummed into the heads of the medical students at Miskatonic University while Herbert attended classes there, patients were, in the end, as much a source of income for doctors as they were people to whom a doctor had a duty of care. He and Stephen were both kept very busy with their patients last autumn, when those who had fallen ill with typhoid during the summer and then recovered, still weak, fell ill once more. He and Stephen were both kept very busy, and most of their patients even managed to dredge up some money to pay them with, though Herbert had quickly gathered that it would be better not to ask too many questions about just where some of that money had come from.

Things had quickly gotten hectic, though, hectic enough that even though there were a few deaths in which the corpses were interred in the potter’s field and the conditions of the corpses would have been ideal or close to it for experimentation, neither Herbert nor Stephen had enough time on their hands to even _consider_ making their way over to the potter’s field once night had fallen—the ground had quickly grown too hard to risk a visit after dark under most circumstances, anyways. Not only had things grown hectic enough that Herbert and Stephen had to institute a moratorium on any experiments, they had grown hectic that honestly, the two of them had barely laid eyes on each for days at a time for weeks, and that…

That was last year. Now, it was October of 1906, and Herbert was looking at his appointment book and resisting the urge to gnaw on his lip. At this point, he suspected he would only have torn his lip to ribbons doing something like that, and given the way the chill in the air would sting… He was not a child anymore (Though some of his patients liked to make impertinent comments when he gave judgments that rubbed them the wrong way). He could restrain himself.

“Herbert?”

When Herbert turned round at the waist in his chair, it was to see Stephen standing in the doorway of his consulting room, head tilted slightly to one side as he regarded him. Early morning sunlight, diluted by thick clouds rolling in from the sea, shone weakly through the house, catching on Stephen’s face and obscuring just a touch the expression he wore. Herbert would be able to guess soon enough.

For right now, Herbert held up his appointment book for reference and made a face. This got him a huff of laughter out of Stephen’s mouth. “Busy today?”

“Very,” Herbert muttered, and tried and failed to push down the stab of guilt that shot up from his stomach. This wasn’t… He had his dreams, his desires, those things he wished to devote all of his attention to. He did have a duty of care, though, didn’t he? The serum was still so imperfect, the effects so insufficient. As of yet, there was very little he could do for anyone after they were dead. The best thing to do was ensure he would not have to try. It ought to be reassuring that many of the men who worked at the mill, as touchy as they were regarding anything that might be considered even the slightest aspersion on their manhood, yet showed enough prudence to call for a doctor when they fell ill.

It was still frustrating, though. He could not stop it from being such.

“So am I,” Stephen told him, and Herbert noticed for the first time that Stephen was wearing his worn old woolen coat and scarf. “Got an appointment in the mill village in about an hour.”

Herbert, who had had enough experience of the mill village already to last a lifetime, felt his lips pull in a grimace. “Good luck getting enough light to see by,” he remarked. “Some of those houses don’t even have any windows, you know.”

Stephen sighed, though he did not seem quite as vexed by that reality as Herbert himself. “Just bring them out onto the porch, then; I’ve seen you do that with the Farinas’ children, and they don’t even live in the village.”

It was the best way to get those children out from under the eyes of their looming parents, who inevitably interfered with any attempt of Herbert’s to speak with those children and get them to answer him _honestly_. But Stephen had had no dealings with the Farinas since he had somehow managed to offend Mrs. Farina (which still made no sense to Herbert, and Stephen could provide him with no enlightenment, since he didn’t actually _know_ what it was he had said to offend her so badly), and _before_ he had offended Mrs. Farina, he had only gone to their house once or twice. Not really enough to notice the pattern.

But Stephen would not be going to the Farinas’ house today, either, and would have no more opportunity to witness the pattern. Herbert, on the other hand, had the feeling he would be spending a _lot_ of time in that dilapidated little house in the days to come.

“Are you off, then?” Herbert nodded to Stephen’s scarf, which he was now fiddling with, trying to wrap it more securely around his neck.

“Yes. I’ll be late coming home; don’t wait for me when it gets to be suppertime.”

Herbert watched him struggle with his scarf for a few moments more—it really was an old thing, and lumpy besides, and difficult to get into the sort of knot that Stephen preferred—until he could stand it no longer. Rising from his chair, hand outstretched, voice pitched a little lower than he had meant it: “Let me.”

Once upon a time, such a request had thrown Stephen enough that he had to take a few moments to process it before acceding. (Herbert had never known him to refuse. He thought about that, sometimes, and never did know just how to feel about it.) Those times were long since past, and it had become predictable to anticipate (Herbert sometimes suspected Stephen of fumbling with his scarf or his necktie purposely, though he had never found the heat required to complain), but not so unwelcome that Stephen would ever do anything but what he was doing, now. That is to say, smile and crane neck enough that Herbert could reach the scarf more easily. “If you insist.”

“I do,” Herbert murmured, and set to work.

The air in the house was unmistakably chill, though Herbert knew it would feel far worse once he was outside and had to contend with the wind as well—the wind chose that moment to batter against the south wall of the house, as if to punctuate his thoughts—but Stephen’s skin felt warm under his fingertips when Herbert’s hands inevitably made contact with Stephen’s neck. This had been, after a certain point… No, from the very beginning, it had been a game of sorts, even when something was genuinely lopsided or wrinkled, even when Herbert was not yet at the point of admitting it to himself. It still was a game, though with familiarity, the rules had changed somewhat. Herbert still had a rather difficult time meeting Stephen’s gaze when he played it. He could feel Stephen’s eyes searing into the crown of his head.

“There,” he said, once he had finished, “I’ve done a slipknot, so that if someone tries to mug you while you’re in the mill village, at least they won’t be able to hold you in place by your neck.”

“I…” Another huff of laughter, this one just a little startled. “I appreciate that.”

“Hmm.” Herbert pursed his lips, reaching out to try and smooth down one of the lumps in the scarf. The rise and fall of Stephen’s chest under his hand never failed to soothe, though he was as yet uncertain why. He ducked his head again, which at this juncture was ridiculous, but it was what it was. “Try not to get stabbed.”

The laugh that answered him was a little stronger, this time. Gaze cast down and a little to the side as it was, Herbert felt Stephen’s hand on his face before he saw it. The last two fingers curled under his chin, tilting his head up a little—not that Herbert was fighting it very hard. Stephen’s hand felt a little cooler than his neck, and was sure to feel downright clammy by the time he made it to his first appointment today—were they all house calls? His lips on Herbert’s cheek were hot. “I could say the same to you.”

“Only two of mine are house calls; between the two of us, I’d say I have the better odds.”

Stephen cracked a lopsided smile. “Well, I know better than to argue with you.” Which was a blatant lie, but one they were both going to be ignoring, for now. “I meant what I said earlier. Don’t wait for me at supper.”

“I won’t.”

And just like that, Stephen was gone. Standing still in the consulting room, feeling as if suspended in amber, Herbert listened to the scrape of wood on wood as the door to the coat closet was forced open—fishing around for a hat and gloves, Herbert hoped. He listened intently, poring over every rustle of cloth, every scrape of hard surface against hard surface, every gust of breath loud enough to carry back to here, and then every receding footstep until the front door was opened and then clattered shut once more.

Herbert worked better in silence. There was no denying that. He could think better when there was little to no background noise, little to nothing in the way of distractions. Loud noises, when he suffered overexposure to them, could easily bring on headaches that would linger in the background of his mind for hours, even after taking medicine to banish the pain.

He worked better in silence. Silence was not particularly well-loved. Silence was something that filled up everything it invaded, and made amplified and exaggerated all sounds that came from outside of it. Well, except down in the basement. The silence was complete, down in the basement, the walls so thick that all sound that came from outside of it was muffled to the point of oblivion.

Herbert glared down at his appointment book. The first patient would be here in about half an hour, if he could actually be bothered to show up on _time_ today, and given Herbert’s past experience of this particular man, he would not be holding his breath. After that, he needed to get out of the house quickly if he wanted to get to the Farina family’s house on time—the youngest child, Alberto, was sick again, or maybe feigning illness, though Herbert would not know which was true until he saw the boy for himself, and frankly, though the parents might have been the ones paying him for looking after the health of their children, all things considered, Herbert was more inclined to sympathize _with_ those children.

Silence would be broken soon enough. A mixed blessing, but one he could live with.

-0-0-0-

The morning passed in a clamor more hectic than Herbert had expected. His first appointment was late, as he had expected, so late that he had to run to the Farinas’ house and _still_ found himself drawing the disapproval of Mrs. Farina down upon himself when he, still slightly breathless, knocked upon the front door. Alberto turned out to actually be ill, though his illness was down to a simple head cold, rather than the flu or bronchitis or any other thing that could have struck down such a little boy in October in Bolton in the Miskatonic Valley, and frankly, Herbert thought that Mrs. Farina ought to be more thankful for that than she was. Then again, she was a fairly recent transplant to this part of Massachusetts, and Herbert did not think she had grown up in the state at all. Speaking of which…

“You… I imagine you are aware that Halloween is approaching,” Herbert told Mrs. Farina stiffly, as he headed for the front door.

Herbert was _not_ a pediatrician. He was absolutely, categorically _not_ a pediatrician, but good luck making either of the elder Farinas accept that for more than five seconds before Mrs. Farina called upon him to look at one of her children (usually Alberto, though she could occasionally be roused to concern regarding the health of the older children, as well) and Herbert had to remind himself, over and over again, that it did not do to alienate your laundress. But as long as he was _acting_ as a pediatrician, he might as well make this inquiry, in particular.

Mrs. Farina, who had not gotten up from her washtub the whole time Herbert was in her house (they had left that particular gesture behind them a while ago, around the last time Herbert had even bothered trying to remind her that he was not a pediatrician, since he knew that suggesting that she actually _try_ the pediatrician in Bolton would just lead to one of the elder Farinas having to circle back round to his own house, after the inevitable but still eyebrow-raising refusal of the actual pediatrician, eyed him for a long moment without speaking, her lips pursed in what Herbert could only suppose was suspicion.

(Herbert supposed that, on one level, he understood the refusal of the pediatrician. On another level, he did not understand it at all. He and Stephen would be going nowhere fast until they managed to build up the sort of prestige—and savings—that would have allowed them to try and make their way in a larger town. All doctors were like that, once, or so Herbert chose to believe. Once upon a time, even the most prestigious, most wealthy doctor was young and green and had to find a way to carve out a patient list of their own, while trying to find enough patients who could actually afford to _pay_ for their services that they would be in no true danger of starving. It was easy to find yourself back in that position again. All it took was moving to a new place, or staying in the same place but contending with competition from the newer, the younger, those more experienced with the latest technology, who were willing to take on the patients you scoffed at and whose vigor eventually began to draw the attention of your own patient list. The men who turned their noses up at treating anyone associated with the mill, anyone with an accent, anyone with a skin color that wasn’t pearly white, they were the same sort of men who had once condemned Herbert’s own ambitions and experiments, the same sort of men who would no doubt still condemn them, if they knew they were still ongoing. But Herbert, even when there were other things he would rather have been doing, did at least remember that he had a duty of care, and these men… Well, for these men, that seemed to be a lesson that had only stuck in certain places.)

When Mrs. Farina finally made a reply to Herbert’s question, the suspicion rooted deep in her voice only confirmed what Herbert had already suspected from the look she had directed his way. “I know the month. Why ask?”

Very new, Herbert would say, and there was still a line regarding how much was safe to know and how much was safe to be ignorant of. Things didn’t get as bad on Halloween as they could on May Day—there were some years when nothing happened at all on Halloween, or, at least, nothing that had ever reached Herbert’s ears—which would have surprised Herbert, but then, he himself did not operate with information enough to know just what the catalyst was. He only knew when it was safer to stay inside after dark, when it was safer not to go out into any forest during the day. And there were times, many times, when Herbert wished to know more, when the desire for greater knowledge burned in him like a coal in a furnace, and there were even times when he was tempted to throw caution to the winds regarding the _price_ , but—

Herbert was ultimately a child of the Miskatonic Valley. Mrs. Farina was _not_ , but her children were by virtue of being children here, even if the eldest among them probably had not been born here, and there was something in him that balked at the idea of some of the children learning the lessons they needed to learn only by watching one of their sibling go out into the dark or the woods and then never return.

“I would suggest,” he said briskly, already heading for the door, “that you keep the children inside on Halloween. Things have been known to happen.”

If Mrs. Farina was at all inclined to ask him what he meant by ‘things,’ she did not call out to Herbert loudly enough for him to hear her before he shut the front door behind him. Truth be told, that was almost a relief. He did not know how he would have explained that to her, at least not in terms that wouldn’t have led her to laugh incredulously in his face.

And no one came to the front door for as long as Herbert lingered on the stoop to catch his bearings, either, so he could not say just how his advice had been received. (Maybe she was just inclined to take him at his word. Maybe she knew just enough to know not to ask any further questions. Herbert could hope for that. He doubted his hope would ever be reflected in this temporal world, but he supposed he could hope.)

He bit back a sigh, wincing as a gust of wind, as bitter and as unforgiving as he had expected to find it, cut across and battered against his bare face. He had an appointment at home, soon, so soon that he would really not be surprised at all to find Mrs. Górka walking down the road on his way back. After that, another appointment at home, then a house call out in town, and two more appointments at home—and all of this wasn’t taking into account the possibility of an accident at the mill, or that someone would come pounding on the front, or sometimes even the back, door, with an emergency. Busy day, indeed, and just looking at the appointment book, just thinking about how many of the people who showed up at the house today would likely be wanting to schedule appointments with himself and with Stephen for later this week, the following days were unlikely to be any more easygoing.

Herbert blinked out at the landscape as it revealed itself to him. Bolton was still a fair way off on foot, though undeniably much closer from here than it was from his own home. Across from this house there was a small field that had at some point in the past few years been allowed to run fallow. The dead brown grass was long and brittle and whistled hollowly in the breeze, but it had long since ceased to be the true master of the field. The field was now choked with thistle plants and blackberry bushes and the occasional holly tree, though the latter specimen was considerably rarer. Behind the field was a dark line of thick, ragged trees that shielded all behind it from view, but even if the pale, dazzling sky was marred by clouds, no amount of cloud cover could disguise the true nature of the thick plumes of white smoke billowing from the mill, just a few miles off. Even with his spectacles missing, Herbert would have been able to discern it; there was hardly any mistaking the _smell_.

Sighing turned to teeth-gritting as Herbert stepped down off of the stoop, out into the unkempt yard, and out from under the shelter of the massive oak trees around the house. Sound carried well, and the noise some distance away of construction workers plying hammers to nails to planks of wood as the so-far troubled construction of the train terminal and the rail line connecting Bolton to Arkham continued was somewhat offensive to the years, but the wind, the _wind_ , the merciless wind, it was more offensive by far.

Herbert did not recognize the impulse that carried him to the edge of the field opposite the Farinas’ home. His rational mind would have much rather he started the journey home without any delay, the better to actually be able to feel _some_ portion of his face by the time he found himself putting his coat back up in the coat closet. But the rational mind, though it _should_ always be made to have primacy, could not always assert itself over those impulses that were both irrational and markedly more powerful than anything put together by the conscious mind. This was not as serious as some of those other irrational urges, but it was no less something that Herbert found himself incapable of ignoring.

He’d not done a lot of wandering as a child. Regardless of who had custody of him at the moment, wandering was _highly_ discouraged, and wandering alone strictly forbidden. What Herbert had learned of trees and plants and flowers and the local fauna, he had mostly learned from reading in books or observing specimens in classrooms. Most of the time he had spent outside in the _natural_ world was in well-kept gardens with his grandparents, or in well-kept lawns with cousins whom he largely did not get along with, though there were a few he could tolerate, and a couple whom he could even profess to be fond of. Time spent in some of the more well-lit, “safer” streets of Arkham, walking around alongside Elsie Watson, with the Mullins twins, with a-few-years-younger Francis Morgan running after them after a few years, until he went away to Boston for school, did not really count, especially not considering that they weren’t really allowed to go too many places by themselves, and were instead for the most part obliged to stay inside, somewhere an adult could see them or was at least in earshot of them.

(He missed those days with Elsie and Lois and Olive and Morgan, sometimes. He shouldn’t. He did, anyways. The mind could be pushed onto certain lanes, most of the times. The heart went where it would, and ignored any suggestions of more prudent paths to take. With Morgan, there had been a time when he had thought— But that had come to nothing, and he tried not to think about it.)

Herbert had not been a child who had been wont to go tearing into overgrown fields like the one he now stood in front of. He was a child who had been fed stories of sinkholes and predatory animals who regarded young children as the choicest of delicacies, fed half-finished stories of so many other things, fed those stories like he would die without them, and it had been enough for him. Any desire for exploration into the natural world was successfully stifled. Perhaps it was only inevitable that an intense desire for exploration had been born that took him down different, so very different avenues.

He hadn’t gone tearing down into fields as a child. He didn’t want to do so now. He needed to get home, needed to get ready for his next appointment, and honestly, Herbert did not want to spend _any_ length of time picking burrs out of his coat or his trousers. He had left behind the age when he could have dealt with that with equanimity behind him long ago.

There was a large, sprawling blackberry bush—or maybe it was a tangle of several blackberry bushes—growing close to the road. Herbert did not know exactly when the berries were supposed to ripen, but there were only a few fat, shiny blackberries left clinging on the branches. They shone in the light of this October morning, gleaming as if wet.

Herbert plucked a few from the branch and popped them into his mouth, one after another. The juice was tart and the seeds aggravating, and his stomach burned as he swallowed them. Breakfast had been several hours ago and typically light, and as Herbert swallowed the last of the blackberries he had picked, his stomach which had been burning began to churn instead.

Perhaps he could have lunch if his appointment with Mrs. Górka wrapped up reasonably quickly, and he made it quick.

 _Ah, there’s no time for that_. And truth be told, the thought of eating anything heavy made Herbert feel a little ill, anyhow.

-0-0-0-

Herbert had absolutely no time to himself for the rest of the day, none whatsoever. Appointments ran long, or else they didn’t run long but just as one patient was leaving or Herbert was getting ready to leave for his second house call or even just to run an errand elsewhere, someone would show up trying to schedule an appointment, and for whatever reason they just could _not_ do it quickly, could not conduct themselves with any brevity, and there went any free time Herbert might have been able to glean in between his appointments.

He really should not complain. He really shouldn’t. It was hard for young, inexperienced doctors to carve out a niche for themselves, especially if they settled in a place where there were already well-established physicians with a well-established, decently loyal patient list. He and Stephen had managed to carve out their own niche in Bolton so easily only because there was a large class of men and women and children in Bolton whom most “respectable” men regarded as being rather beneath their notice, beneath their obligation to care at all. There was something of a language barrier to contend with with some of them, but Herbert took on most of those patients and he thought that, in most cases, both doctor and patient were getting to the point where they could understand each other without a pressing need for a translator. Most of those men and women and children whom the older, more well-established, more “respectable” doctors in Bolton had gone a good portion of their lives by now being the sort of people whom doctors who weren’t being paid by the mill to look at them tended to turn their noses up at. As such, there were certain points of protocol, of courtesy, with which they were unacquainted, and they had taken to attempts at instruction with varying degrees of good humor—and there were some whom Herbert would not make that attempt with at all, for he knew _exactly_ how they would take any attempt at instruction, and regardless of what Stephen might say or think, Herbert did not just go picking fights with anyone and everyone he pleased, especially not when he knew he was unlikely to come off better in the fight itself.

He really should not complain. And Herbert did not voice those complaints to anyone who might have carried tales of them back to his patients, did not voice those complaints to anyone who had both the power and the inclination to do something that could have thinned his patient list. Perhaps the reason Stephen thought he was so eager to pick a fight he could not hope to win was because he had listened to Herbert complain—it _had_ not been a rant, and if Stephen really thought it had been, Herbert wondered just how closely he had been listening when Herbert expounded upon the shortsightedness of the faculty at the medical school, because if _anything_ had been a rant, then even Herbert would agree that it had been that. Herbert was aware that many of his, of _their_ patients were not overly well-acquainted with the social niceties regarding appointment-making.

At least, they hadn’t been at the start. But it had been over a year, now, and while some of the men who worked in the mill were possessed of such enviably robust health that they so rarely needed to see a doctor that _they_ , theoretically, could have been excused, that did _not_ account for the rest of them. Things were approaching the point where the people most likely to remember and abide by those guidelines which had been _clearly_ laid out from the beginning (with the aid of an interpreter in some cases, but still) were the eldest of the Farinas’ children. That was just… That it didn’t embarrass more people to be held up against _children_ and found wanting amazed Herbert. Considering it had been going on for over a year and showed no sign of stopping, perhaps Herbert ought to be amazed at himself, as well.

So as you can imagine, it was a long day, one which did not seem to grow any shorter as the sun made its swift descent into the west. Herbert saw his last patient out of the door a little after six, craned his neck outside the door just enough to ascertain that there was no sign of Stephen coming up Pond Street—might have begged supper off of someone; it wasn’t like there were any restaurants in Bolton he could have stopped at—and shaking his head, shut and locked the door, only stopping short of the deadbolt because he didn’t know when Stephen would be home, didn’t know if he’d been in a part of the house and a state of concentration where he could easily hear him knocking, didn’t want to force Stephen to come in through the back door (which had no deadbolt, though Herbert was considering strongly the virtues of obtaining one), and would just rather cause Stephen as little fuss as possible. He was bound to be tired by the time he got home.

Herbert was not done for the day, though. It was no longer the appointment book that vexed him, but the books in which he kept notes on his patients’ conditions, and general state of health. It was due diligence; he knew that. Mrs. Rykken had shown some signs that her arthritis was worsening. O’Brien had yet another fractured rib that needed to be held up alongside the rib fractures Herbert had treated him for in the past, and it was due diligence to track these problems, especially considering that they could interact with past problems to create even worse ones to deal with in the future. If Herbert didn’t do it tonight, he would just have to do it some other night, and the sooner, the better—if either O’Brien or Mrs. Rykken showed up later without Herbert having done this first, it would just create problems that could easily have been avoided. Those were the sorts of problems Herbert wished least to contend with.

It was due diligence. Herbert had his theories, had his passions, his goals and his dreams, his _work_ , but this would always be here, too. He could do none of it if he was so useless as a doctor that he lost all of his patients and was left to beg a meager living on the streets. What he did was ultimately for the benefit of the living. He had not forgotten that, though it sometimes fell through the cracks of conscious thought. It would be good to keep it in mind when the living conspired to irritate him beyond endurance.

Night was coming quickly upon him, and Herbert did what he had done every evening he was present in this house, ever since he had taken charge of it. Shut the curtains, and it did not mean that there was nothing on the other side of the window. Shut the curtains, and at least you could be certain that whatever was on the other side of the window could not see you moving about, or that all it could see was a warped and hazy silhouette—certainly, you would not get the shock of glinting eyes in the dark. Herbert studiously avoided looking into the rippling, twinkling glass, and pulled those curtains firmly shut.

Once he reached the kitchen, Herbert stopped first to make certain that the door was locked. He grimaced as he tried the knob. Even if the door did lock and shut properly, nowadays, it was such a flimsy door, so easily rattled by the slightest gust of wind. Herbert had dithered so long on getting a latch or a deadbolt partly out of concern for the expense, it was true, but there was part of him that wondered what good it would even do; there were days when he thought that even he might have been able to take the door off of its hinges, with sufficient motivation.

Herbert’s hands shook slightly as he shut the curtains over the kitchen window. The chill that had already been pervasive this morning was only worse, now, especially considering the kitchen stove was cold and dead. The furnace worked properly, now, but did little to warm the house in cold times. Herbert had felt cold worrying at his skin since he had come back inside. He blew on his hands, but to no avail; they shook, unabated.

It was the cold. He needed to look over the notes he had taken today, and update his files. He had no time to waste, worrying over the cold, and as long as he could steady his hands to write, he would not.

-0-0-0-

The weather the next day was a mirror of the previous day. Cold weather made colder by bitter gusts of wind; a pale, dazzling sky marred by swirling clouds; just enough humidity in the air to make that cold all the more biting and voracious. Except now, Herbert was going into it after having endured a _night_ much colder than the last, and going out into it feeling markedly sore and tired and feeling as if the cold had pierced all the way down into his bones. Herbert did not like the cold to start with. He failed to see why he should, when the cold clearly had something against _him_.

 _People with no meat on their bones usually feel the cold more keenly_. He could hear Stephen’s voice echoing in the back of his head, even if there was no trace of the man himself to be found as Herbert readied himself for the day. He had awoken, a little while before dawn, to the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and then the rattle and clatter of the front door opening, and then shutting. Remarkably early house call, that, but then, they’d both had earlier in the height of summer, when it was actually light out at this time of morning. There were people who wanted to be examined _before_ their workday in the mill began, rather than after, or waiting until a day when they could beg off of work and expect a result other than being out of work altogether. Such a desire and such a request and such an appointment had cut short the night on many occasions. Herbert had accepted it during the summer. He did not think he was going to be as receptive to it on occasions when he had to set out in the dark, in the misty stillness of an autumn pre-dawn, when he could not see more than about a foot into the tree line of the forests all around.

Ah, well. He did not have much of a choice about it, now. The first appointment was a house call out in the mill village at eight, and the day was only going to drag on from there—most of Herbert’s own appointments were house calls, today, and some of them with people, new to Bolton and new to the mill, whom he had never dealt with before, and whose personalities and characters he could only make the barest guess at. Sure to be a pleasant day.

Herbert winced as he pushed back the bedclothes, hissing between clenched teeth. As bad as the cold had felt when he had his sheets and quilts pulled up to his chin, it was worse now. His hands constantly fumbled on his clothes as he dressed, tripping over his necktie in a way his hands hadn’t done since he was a boy starting to wear a necktie and do it up himself, unaided, for the first time. By the time he was done, he was clenching his teeth and running through a list of profanities in his mind. Damn, he hoped his hands weren’t this clumsy when he was seeing to his new patients; it wasn’t like those patients in question were spoiled for choice for doctors in the vicinity who would actually see to them, but there was still some wisdom in trying to make a good impression. Gossip would travel fast if he went to those patients and behaved as if he was ill himself, or if he had the shakes from heroin withdrawal. Herbert had never cared to be gossiped about back in Arkham; he would just as soon avoid being gossiped about in Bolton, as well.

The sun was just beginning to show itself over the towering pine and beech and elm trees in the forests of the valley when Herbert stepped out his door and carefully locked it behind him. For a moment, when Herbert looked east, he had to stop and frown, suddenly feeling powerfully, violently ill.

Sooner or later, the sun would rise high enough into the sky to burn off all of the silvery mist that gathered in the road and the field and the forests. Now was not that moment; now, the sun was yet so weak that the more fanciful among the residents might wonder if it was strong enough even to break all the way past the horizon at all.

For a moment, when Herbert looked east, he could have sworn he was seeing two suns rising over the horizon. He blinked his eyes rapidly, and the image resolved itself into a single sun, yet little more than a sliver of burning light making itself seen over the dark silhouettes of the trees. Herbert shook his head and sucked in a gasping breath and kept on walking, telling himself that it was ridiculous to be looking at such a bright light source when he was so soon out of bed. By the time he reached the town, he was experiencing such no longer, but though the sun was markedly higher in the sky, the world felt no warmer to Herbert, who turned up the collar of his coat and pulled his scarf a little closer about his neck. He had a long day ahead of him, and it would be better to actually be able to feel as much of his skin as possible as he went about the experience of living it.

-0-0-0-

Herbert did not know exactly at what age workers in the mill were no longer classified as child laborers. He had never had occasion to work in any sort of mill, let alone a textile mill, and it was not something Herbert had ever needed to know. Forget never working in a mill, or a textile mill; as a child, he had not known any of the _children_ in Arkham who worked in any such establishment. (He wondered about that, sometimes. Arkham was not such a small town that it could really be considered reasonable to know everyone who lived there, if you yourself lived there and had for the vast majority of your life, but it was not so large that it would really be _plausible_ that Herbert had never known any of those children. He would have had passing conversations with them in the street on the way to or from one destination or another, at least. But when Herbert was going anywhere with adults, it was most likely that they would be traveling in a coach, for even if those distances were short, his paternal grandparents were getting on in years, and his other relatives were, well, not the sort of people who wanted to mix with anyone who might drop a syllable. And when Herbert walked places, he was encouraged not to speak with strangers, even if those strangers were children. But still, he did think about it, sometimes.) It was not something which had ever had the occasion to naturally come up in conversation.

Seventeen did not feel like a child to him, but Herbert knew that that could be attributed far more to the lack of distance between seventeen and his own age, than to objective reality. When _he_ was seventeen, he’d not considered _himself_ a child, too, and yet, the law said he still had to—

The point was, Herbert was not sure where the line was. He’d only started to think about it now when he was brought face to face with his first patient for the day, a tall, spindly seventeen-year-old girl by the name of Hannah Dunn, and it occurred to him that he had never asked.

The mill, being the sort of place that it was, probably counted seventeen as an adult. The mill probably treated seventeen as more of an adult than anywhere in town, with all of the downsides that came with that, and very few of the positives. Given Hannah’s pasty, strained expression as Herbert was ushered into the low, tiny, poorly-lit house, Herbert suspected he was not so far off of that as all that. She certainly didn’t _look_ like she was enjoying being saddled with the responsibilities of an adult.

This house was cleaner than the Farinas’ home was yesterday when he visited, though that was not saying very much, and given the way the mill monitored its housing, it was only natural. Miss Hannah was sitting on a chair by the window, a tiny, rickety table pulled up alongside her for Herbert to set his things on. She was still in her nightdress, a faded powder-blue thing with little pink spots on them that Herbert thought might once have been the pattern of flowers, though in the poor light of the house, and considering how old and worn the nightdress was, it was of course impossible to say. (Whatever else was true, Mrs. Dunn at least seemed to consider her daughter still a child, if she would allow her to appear in front of a man such in the light of day, even if that man was a doctor. Herbert wouldn’t make comment on it. He knew better than to carry tales.) Her short-cropped, dark hair was tangled and uneven, and completely absent from a seam on the left-hand side of her head where a thin, pink scar wended its way across her scalp.

So, new to Bolton, perhaps, but not new to working in a mill, most likely. Herbert wondered if that scar had anything to do with why the Dunn family was now in Bolton, rather than wherever it was they had been living before. He could well believe it did. He could well believe it didn’t. The curiosity would burn inside of him, but he knew better than to ask, especially not on this, the very first appointment he had had with anyone in the family. And all that was far less relevant than pallor of Miss Hannah’s face, and the rough, hacking cough that wracked her as Herbert set his bag down on the table.

“What seems to be the trouble?” Herbert addressed the girl, looking her over with a critical eye. Of course, it being the first time he had met Hannah Dunn, he could not say for certain whether she was perhaps faking or falsifying symptoms to get out of another day in the frankly hellish conditions of the textile mill, as was a common tactic of Bianca Farina, a tactic beginning to be adopted by certain of Bianca’s younger siblings. The way her face twisted whenever she coughed certainly suggested that there was some genuine pain in the act of coughing, but Bianca had once confided in Herbert, when neither of her parents and none of her siblings were in earshot, that she had once punched herself in the chest until it hurt to breathe, just to make the ruse more convincing.

(Herbert kept expecting to feel some inner moral unease from the fact that he never told either Mister or Mrs. Farina what their daughter had confided in him. Perhaps he should feel that unease. But it had never materialized. As long as Bianca kept on confiding in him, he could at least monitor her, and make certain she never did serious harm to herself. He could well imagine how either of her parents would have reacted to learn that their daughter was ‘shirking’, and it was not a mental image that brought him much joy. Personally, he thought Bianca might be more concerned with preserving those fingers which were left to her, than she was with ‘relaxing’ at home while most of the rest of her family was working.)

Regardless of all else, of whether seventeen could be considered an adult, of whether Miss Hannah was or was not exaggerating her symptoms, of whether anything else, Herbert thought that seventeen was old enough for the girl to tell him her symptoms, or at least give him a _general_ idea of what he was dealing with, even if she didn’t quite have the vocabulary to articulate in detail what was happening with her.

Mrs. Dunn frowned at him and opened her mouth before her daughter could reply. “She’s had a bad cough these past few days, and this morning when I woke her, she had a fever.”

Herbert paused a moment, looking between Mrs. Dunn and her daughter. The moments dragged on, and Miss Hannah made no attempt to assert herself. She kept on sitting at that chair, unspeaking, though she did cough a few more times, and yes, those coughs did sound markedly unpleasant.

He’d… not actually heard the girl speak at all since he had come inside, not even a hoarse ‘hello’ when he was setting his scarf on the coatrack. Content to let her mother speak for her, perhaps, or perhaps not, but that wasn’t what Herbert was here for.

“Lean forward in the chair,” he told Miss Hannah, as he was digging his stethoscope out of his bag. Things did tend to sound a bit different if there was actually mucus building up in your chest cavity, as opposed to whether you’ve just hit yourself in the chest until it hurts to breathe to make it seem as if you’re ill. He’d know soon enough.

Silent, but apparently capable of doing as she was told, Hannah Dunn leaned forward in the chair, wincing and clutching at her sides as she did so.

“Set your arms at your sides; I need to be able to hear properly.

At this, Herbert was greeted with a decidedly resentful noise escaping the girl’s mouth, but she did as she was told, relaxing her arms so that they sat at her sides and could not interfere with any of his perceptions of what was transmitted through the stethoscope. Mrs. Dunn came to stand between the chair and the window, blocking out much of the light in the room—there was a gas lamp on, but it was very dim and properly illuminated only the space in a radius about three feet from itself—but that wouldn’t become a problem until after Herbert was done with the stethoscope, and he bade Miss Hannah sit up straight once again.

Herbert set the stethoscope to the middle of Hannah Dunn’s back, and…

And it was a long moment before he could remember just what he was supposed to be doing with it.

Knowledge suddenly dropping out of his head, like rainwater falling from a broad leaf once so much rainwater has gathered in it that it can bear the weight no longer, was never a pleasant sensation, no matter what circumstances it happened under. In the past, Herbert had known it as the bane of his existence when it came time for school and university exams. In the case of the latter, he had eventually conquered that phenomenon by studying so obsessively for his exams that he practically _breathed_ his study material, and did not need to sketch a few lines on his wrist in ink because it was _all_ etched into the fabric of his brain, so deeply that he could pull it all up at a thought. He _hated_ the idea that something he had been studying for weeks or months or years could just desert his memory at a moment’s notice because he was tired or distracted or anxious or he had just been trying to memorize too much information at once. He hated the idea that he could be judged based on something he had momentarily forgotten, and that that judgment could follow him around for weeks or months or years or perhaps even the rest of his life.

There were other reasons for the hatred. He was remembering starkly those reasons, now, as Herbert’s stomach felt like it had dropped out of his body as he groped desperately for what he was supposed to be doing, what he was supposed to be listening for. He could feel Mrs. Dunn staring at him, though he did not dare look up to look her in the face and see what sort of expression of disbelief or derision must certainly be distorting her features even now. Hannah Dunn was not turning in her chair to look at him, but her back had stiffened noticeably and he could well imagine what she was supposing about this strange man who was supposed to be determining just what it was that was wrong with her.

Where had it gone, where had it gone, where had it all gone…

At last, Herbert remembered, and he was able to continue the appointment without any further incident. Miss Hannah Dunn did seem to be genuinely ill, and if she was exaggerating her symptoms to avoid working in a place that could have given her another scar to match with the one on the side of her head, Herbert could discern no sign of that, but given what he had failed to remember just before he had begun examining the girl in earnest, perhaps he was not the best judge of that on this chilly October morning.

Things went as they might have gone, on any morning, during any house call in a chilly October morning in the mill village. But still, as Herbert went about his business, as he gave his recommendations to Mrs. Dunn, as she was still balking and frowning when he tried to address Miss Hannah directly, and Miss Hannah never said a word to him, Herbert could not shake off the feeling that he had been judged, and found wanting. There was nothing as concrete to that impression as when the faculty of the medical school had looked at him as if they had mistaken him for one of the local idiots, but it was still buried deep in his mind, where it could not be removed. He had a feeling that it would be a long time before the Dunn family called upon him again, if they called upon him again at all.

So long as they didn’t go spreading tales. That was the last thing he needed.

-0-0-0-

When Herbert stepped out of the dark little house, there was a moment when the light of the sun seemed doubled once more, as it had just after he had started down Pond Street towards town. He had to blink rapidly, gritting his teeth and resisting the urge to let a stream of muttered profanity loose from his lips, but eventually, the world coalesced once more and the light was focused on a single source in the east.

In the amount of time Herbert had spent in the house of the Dunn family (well, he supposed you could only call it the house of the Dunn family if you were taking occupancy into account; Herbert did not know for certain, but he had heard enough stories to get the idea that a mill needed very little pretext to evict a family living in a house in their own mill housing, and did not know whether or not that was true also for _this_ mill), the sun had risen high enough in the sky to burn off all of the mist that had blanketed Bolton and the surrounding area while Herbert was making his way here. However, though the mist might be gone, the sun was still _low_ enough in the sky that there were thick, stark shadows cast all across the mill village, putting certain parts of the village into what seemed remarkably like night.

Herbert spent a long moment lingering in front of the tiny stoop of the tiny house, staring around himself. He never got used to the sheer _sameness_ of all of the houses. They were the exact same size and design as one another, all painted the same color—he had heard that it was forbidden for the houses to be painted a different color by whoever was currently living in them, that it was forbidden also to put any decorations up on the exterior of the houses—and were all situated exactly the same distance from the dirt roads that ran between the rows of houses, dirt roads just large enough to get a cart through, and on top of that, were all situated exactly the same distance away from their neighbors. Herbert wouldn’t be surprised if the builders had gotten out a ruler to make certain of it, it was all so neat and orderly and _standardized_.

Under normal circumstances, Herbert liked it when things were neat and orderly. He was not unrealistic where the world was concerned, and knew that things could not always be such—the nature of the world was ultimately chaos, and man’s greatest achievements had all been in the name of bringing something resembling order to the chaos—but he did like it when things were, to some greater or lesser extent, predictable. Herbert had not had good experiences with things he could not predict in any way. No one who had been born here and grown up here could do anything but agree with him on that score. Perhaps, on a different day, in a different mood, he might have been content with the design of the mill village.

Today was not that day. The mood Herbert was in was not that mood. He eyed the road leading towards the mill with something it took him a moment to recognize as unease. Nearly every adult who lived in these houses was at work in the mill at this moment, and those among them who were not were clearly shut up in their homes, likely still working. Herbert saw no sign of those children regarded as too young to work in the mill; they were off at school, he supposed, though he’d not noticed any children heading off to school as he was first making his way here. With no sign of life, with all of the houses looking so incredibly similar, it was hard to keep track of just how many there were. Staring down the road between the rows of houses, it felt as if the houses just went on and on and on, cookie-cutter dwellings from which dolls would emerge instead of people, dancing on strings that just led them on and on into the mill, to work and work and work until something finally broke and they were fed to the furnace to make room for new dolls.

Herbert stared up and down the two rows of houses currently within his sight, and… They really were identical, you know. There were little number plates by the front doors of each of them, but you had to come onto the stoop to be close enough to read what they said. The numbers were also painted on the mailboxes out by the road, and _they_ were also small enough that you had to come stand right by the mailbox to have any hope of actually being able to read them. The houses were identical, frankly disturbing in their sameness, and in the morning, in the silence and the stillness, standing among them made Herbert feel just a little light-headed.

More than a little, actually. Herbert swayed a bit in the breeze as he tried and failed to catch his bearings. He sucked in a long, deep breath, trying to steady himself, and eventually he did succeed, but not wholly.

Though little true care had gone into the construction of the houses in the mill village, Herbert knew enough to know that these houses were, for the most part, in better condition than his own home had been when he and Stephen had first moved in. Even with that in mind, Herbert would not have wished to live here. He preferred living in a house where it took more than ten seconds for him to get from the front door to the back. He preferred living in a house that could be distinguished from his neighbors by more than just the number plate or the numbers painted on the mailbox. And as for some of these houses with parents trying for more children… No, that did not bear thinking about.

The light-headedness Herbert had felt as he tried to drink in the sight of these houses for a few moments intensified into dizziness as he began to make his way _out_ of the mill village. It was… it was easy to get lost, here, Herbert actually _had_ gotten lost trying to get out of the mill village a couple of times, when he had to go to a house in the heart of it and he forgot how many roads and crossroads he had passed to reach his patient’s home, and he had gone deep into the mill village this time as well, and it seemed so easy to get lost when the houses were all the same, with no distinguishing characteristics _allowed_ , let alone present, and there were no trees or flowerbeds or bushes to serve as landmarks.

Herbert couldn’t remember how many houses he had passed to reach the Dunn family’s home. He did not think he had been counting, and even if he had, he certainly could not retrieve the number, now. He would just… He needed to be home in an hour and a half, he had a patient coming in an hour and a half. He would just start walking.

-0-0-0-

Herbert did manage to get lost in the mill village again, though not badly, and he eventually managed to spot a building in Bolton proper that he recognized, and started heading towards it, though he had to cut across a few poor patches of backyard to do so, and could only hope that no one had spotted him doing it, or that if they had, that no one had recognized him in his coat and his scarf. He returned to his home in time for his next appointment, though he had had to pick up his pace halfway down Pond Street and he had just set up his things properly when a sharp, rapping knock was heard on the front door.

The rest of the day had that character to it, all the time. Herbert didn’t have any more house calls that would have further complicated matters, but it was just that same old story, wasn’t it? The very moment you start to relax, something else demands your attention, so that no true relaxation can be found, not even for a few moments. There were a couple of hours when he wasn’t even able to sit down, let alone gather his thoughts.

It was another long, frustrating day, and it was only after Herbert had closed all of the curtains and checked to make certain that both the front and back doors were locked, that he was finally able to stand still and take a breath. That breath was full of air so cold that it struck his lungs like knives, and it did not steady him as he had hoped it would. He had been feeling light-headed all afternoon, with a droning headache setting in at around three o’clock, and standing still and taking a deep breath did nothing to help. He was in silence again, and though that silence was little-loved, he thought that perhaps he could get a little work done, or at least make some revisions to the notes.

Not too many revisions, Herbert told himself, as he began to make the descent into the basement. Stephen wasn’t home yet, and he didn’t like to make too many revisions, didn’t like to go down too many different avenues, when Stephen was not around. That was not how they did things, was it? It was not how they had done things since Stephen first begun to work with Herbert on the serum, several years ago. Someone who would listen to him when he tried to speak of his theories, someone who would listen to him and make a response that was something other than derisive laughter or excoriations on the immorality of it or just horrified silence and then an abandonment that never abated, that the person who had abandoned him and his ideas never seemed to second-guess seen once, the idea that someone would listen to him and then _stay_ had been… Herbert did not underestimate its value. Herbert did not underestimate Stephen’s value. He kept him in the loop on everything, for more than one reason. It did help to have another mind to bounce ideas off of, to make suggestions, to look over the notes with a critical eye to spot potential mistakes. Herbert might well still be struggling to elicit any effect at all on a human corpse if things were otherwise.

But reading over the notes once again wouldn’t hurt. It couldn’t hurt to just read over them one more time, trying to spot any small, niggling errors that could be corrected without the need to present them to Stephen’s eyes to make certain that nothing had been approached from the wrong angle, or that none of the equations possessed any errors.

Herbert sat himself down at the little table in the basement, wincing and shivering as he did so. The furnace was here in the basement, and as far as he could tell, it _was_ working regularly nowadays, but as chilly as the house was, the basement was downright frigid, so cold that it felt here as if the summer sun had never touched the earth at all. It wasn’t a damp cold, Herbert had made certain that damp would not easily be able to find its way here, but it was as pervasive and as piercing as any damp cold could have ever hoped to be. More so, perhaps, for now he was underground, and though the descriptor ‘a place the summer sun has never touched’ might be just a bit of an exaggeration, for though Herbert didn’t know much about what goes into the construction of a house, he suspected that the basement had probably been dug out first, and that therefore, there must have been a time when the basement _was_ exposed to the sun, the basement had clearly not spent very long being exposed to the light and the warmth of the sun.

No matter. Cold as the basement was now, it was nothing compared to the misery of the depths of last winter, when the snows had fallen thick and more often than not, the furnace was not working at all. Herbert did not think his hands were shaking scarcely less than they had been on those occasions when he had been obliged to come down here last winter, but he pushed that thought from his mind as he took out the most recent of the several books of notes that they had been obliged to recreate after the fire in the Chapman farmhouse. It was less important than the work he had been obliged to neglect.

He…

He…

You know, when Herbert treated patients struck down with more than the most trivial of ailments, there were times when he imagined them dead. It gave him no joy to imagine them this way, knowing as he did that if they were to die while under his care, there was nothing he could do for them, then.

Well. Perhaps that was not quite true. There was nothing he could do to the fresh corpse that would restore it wholly to proper life, nothing he could do that would restore mental faculties to what they had been in first life, nothing he could do that would not render the reanimated corpse something most would shun as entirely inhuman. So much progress, they had made so much progress, and yet here they were, stuck at this juncture, and Herbert unable to find a lamp to light that would shine upon the correct path to take to advance further. So much progress, and here they were stuck, at the point where they could reanimate a corpse if it was freshly-dead and had suffered no truly catastrophic injuries, the sort of injuries that would have logically put the reanimated corpse right back down into death again, but they had absolutely no means of restoring sapience, and out here, they had little means of doing anything at all.

Herbert pressed a hand to his temple, sighing in aggravation and reeling as the world went dark for a moment. It was the same problem, the exact same problem it had always been. They could make no more progress without a steady supply of subjects for experimentation and without a steady supply of the ingredients they needed to make the serum. The ingredients for the serum were universally expensive to obtain, many of them difficult to obtain, and certain of them difficult to obtain _legally_. (Herbert could only hope for greater deregulation in future times, though hoping for deregulation only to affect the things that inconvenienced him personally sounded like a losing bet, honestly.) The _other_ materials, and here Herbert looked out to the general direction of the potter’s field, were impossible for them to obtain legally in their present circumstances, and the consequences if they were caught…

 _How are we supposed to make any progress like this_?

The question could well have been screamed, if Herbert had anyone left to scream it at. Halsey was the most likely culprit, but where Halsey was _now_ —no, that wouldn’t do. (Not simple, not simple, not simple at all.)

So yes, Herbert did imagine his patients dead, from time to time. He did not wish to. It was not something he did with a conscious will. But there were times when he looked at them, and all he could see was them no longer conscious and breathing, but cold and decaying, locked in an embrace from which no earthly power could wholly free them. He did not wish to. The thoughts clung to his mind anyway, like stubborn mold against an old wooden wall, eating away at everything it touched.

What Herbert could do now was try… He blinked, trying to settle his thoughts upon one topic in particular. He could try… could try to just look at the notes. Just look for any trifling errors, look for anything that could be quickly and neatly corrected without having to wait for Stephen to come home to have a look at it himself, and maybe once Stephen was home, they would be able to speak of it or of other things, though considering that it was dark outside and Herbert had yet to hear any signs of life upstairs, there was every chance Stephen would come home too tired to do much of anything but sleep. (Herbert knew the feeling, though he had mostly known it from last winter and this past spring, from last summer when they worked in the hospital from before dawn to sometime after dark with only half an hour’s break to eat their lunch. The memory of it had remained with him, though. Even when he felt as if he was thinking through a fog, those memories were easy to summon from the abyss of long memory.)

It was… it was darker in here, all of a sudden. Herbert could not remember when last he had checked to see if the gas lamp had enough fuel. When… when had that been?

He had enough light to see by. When he focused, he could still see. He could see well enough to read. The rest did not matter.

Herbert turned his attention away from the book he had pulled down from the shelf long enough to blow on his hands, grimacing when this failed to warm his fingers even slightly. If anything, the moisture on his breath only chilled his skin even further, leaving his hands feeling even colder than they had before he had blown on them. As long as he could hold a pencil or pen, that should not matter to him, though there was something else trying to batter down the doors leading into the back of his mind, something calling to him, something he can’t quite identify properly, something he can’t put a name to.

The book, he had come down here to look over the book, over notes written in two different hands, notes that he hoped that, even if he could not find anything in need of correction, perhaps he would be able to find a loose thread in, something he could track to a new avenue of study. That was what was worth his attention. At present, it was the only thing in the house worth his attention.

Herbert opened the book to the most recent page, and… and had to stop, staring at the page in sick, awful confusion.

The letters were… The words were… they were wrong. They didn’t look like anything either Herbert or Stephen had ever written in any of their notes, either the ones written before or after the fire that had consumed all of their earliest work. They didn’t look like words written in any language that Herbert had enough familiarity with to identify, they didn’t look like language at all, they were just squiggly black lines that Herbert would _swear_ were moving, but that didn’t make sense, that didn’t make any sense at all, and Herbert peered closer at the page, gnawing on his lower lip as he tried hazily to make this make any sense at all, and he wondered if he might not—

Later, Herbert would have no memory of how he had ended up on the floor, though when he was back to himself enough to run through the sequence of events in his mind, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of ways he _could_ have wound up lying on his side on the brick floor of the basement. The world had gone dark, and then he was on the floor, and so cold and numb that he couldn’t feel most of his own body and what little he could feel was so sore and aching that if he had been beaten into unconsciousness with a bat, he didn’t think the aching would have been any less.

He could barely feel his own body. He could feel the hands on his shoulders, roughly jostling him. All was dim and gloomy and out of focus—where were his spectacles? He’d not laid them down before he began to read; where had they gone?—but Herbert, as he blinked his eyes over and over again, trying in vain to make the world resolve itself into something that wasn’t dim and narrow and out of focus, thought he could see a leg folded at the knee. His hearing was about as sharp as if he had stuffed cotton wool in his ears. Everything was fuzzy and indistinct, and as the moments in which he was awake and lying on the floor dragged on, Herbert thought it might sound also a little bit like he was underwater. Herbert had not spent much of his time totally submerged in water. He had learned to swim as a child, of course—an uncle had taken him to the sea to learn, in defiance of everything his paternal grandparents had demanded—but he wasn’t stupid enough to go seeking out the sea unnecessarily and had not been swimming since he was maybe twelve. He remembered the sort of sound of the water rushing in his ears, though. This was something remarkably similar to that. But it was dry, here, and there was no water.

A thick, clinging disorientation burrowed deep into him, the wrongness of the whole situation intensifying with each moment that had passed. He was so tired, and that didn’t make sense. He was cold, and that didn’t make sense. He could barely see, barely hear, and that didn’t make sense. How… how… how had he even ended up like this?

After a few moments like that, Herbert lying still on his side, staring at the leg just barely in his field of vision, barely feeling the hands shaking his shoulders—or maybe it wasn’t a few moments, maybe it was just a split-second, and Herbert’s sense of time was distorted as well—he began to hear something that wasn’t a noise like the rushing of water. Herbert’s mind didn’t want to work, didn’t want to focus on anything, but he tried, forcing his mind to focus on the noise until it at last resolved itself into a high, panicked “—awake? Can you hear me?!”

His head was made of lead. His head was made of lead and his neck, meanwhile, was made of thin jelly, something so weak that you couldn’t imagine it would be able to support the head without snapping in two. Nevertheless, Herbert made an attempt at lifting his head off of the floor, though he could only manage an inch or two before his head fell against the floor once again in a dull thud that sent sparks of pain racing across his scalp. Herbert instead devoted his energy, how little much there was now, to rolling enough to get a better view of what, of _who_ , was on the floor beside him.

Stephen. Herbert didn’t know why he was surprised—who else would be in their basement?—but he was surprised, all the same. What sort of answer he might have given when his mouth felt as if it, too, was stuffed full of cotton wool, he was uncertain, but it seemed that rolling enough to look up into Stephen’s pale face, blurry as it was, had been enough.

“Alright.” Slightly less high-pitched, now, though it still trembled with a quality Herbert rarely ever heard inject itself into Stephen’s typically easygoing voice. “Okay. You’re awake. That’s… that’s good.”

Yes, he was awake, and if he wished for this to progress at all, he must push past that feeling of his mouth having been stuffed with cotton wool enough to ask: “Where… where are my…”

“Here.” Stephen slipped his hand behind the back of Herbert’s head, lifting it up enough to slide his spectacles back onto his face more easily. With that, the world was back in focus, and Herbert was staring up into Stephen’s pale, and he could see now, strained, taut face. The gas lamp had been moved to the chair upon which Herbert usually sat when he was down here and not suddenly finding himself on the floor, and somehow the golden light it put off only made Stephen look even paler.

Stephen’s other hand went to Herbert’s head as well, feeling around for… for breaks. Yes, breaks. The world was coming back into focus, bit by bit, as Stephen peppered him with the sort of questions Herbert had asked what felt like dozens of times, now, when he attended to someone he suspected might have cracked his skull on a bad fall. He still felt cold, and mostly numb, and what wasn’t numb was as sore as if he’d been beaten with a bat or been forced to run several miles without breaks or assistance, and Herbert wasn’t even certain if there was strength to be found in his body to lift himself up off of the floor, but he could see clearly once more, hear clearly once more, and that was something, he supposed. What exactly it was supposed to be, he was less certain, but it was something.

At last, the barrage of questions came to an end, and Stephen gingerly withdrew his hands from Herbert’s head. “No concussion, I think. That’s…” Stephen swallowed a harsh, giddy breath. “That’s good.”

Herbert tried to think of something to say in response. There was little he _wanted_ to say besides a sudden acute longing for his bed, but he could not push it out through his mouth. All he could push out, now that the questioning was over and he was no longer obliged to give answers that formed actual words, was a soft, indistinct, “Hmm.”

“You… you should sit up.” Stephen’s hands were back, sliding under Herbert’s back, forcing him up off of the ground. “It’s not… you shouldn’t…”

Herbert offered no resistance as he was eased up off of the ground. Even if he had had the will, he did not have the way. He still felt as weak as if every drop of strength had been wrung from his body like water from a dishrag. Everything spun a little as he was pushed upright; his stomach churned, but soon subsided when it found nothing to churn with but bile. At least like this, the cold of the earth had to take a little longer to seep into his body.

“How do you feel?” Stephen asked him in a low voice, still quavering noticeably. His hands shook slightly where they now rested on Herbert’s upper arms, clutching at fabric like he expected Herbert to suddenly find the strength to get up and run.

“Cold,” Herbert mumbled, rubbing his hands together in a vain effort to chafe warmth of even feeling back into them.

A strangled little noise quivered in the chill air. “I can imagine. Come here—“ now, Stephen tugged Herbert forward once again, until he was sitting in his lap, held close against his chest “—and put your hands against my chest if you want to warm them up. We don’t have any hot water right now.”

Sad commentary—no, frustrating commentary, that Herbert didn’t think he could have gone upstairs this moment and put a pot of water over the stove until it was warm enough to suit. Infuriating commentary on the weakness of his own body, that he was incapable of even that much. It was his own failing, and Stephen had never seemed over-eager to serve as an audience to self-castigation. And the idea of more immediate warmth sounded pretty good right now, as well. There was certainly that.

Stephen jerked a little as Herbert set his hands where he had been bid. “Your hands feel frozen,” he muttered, pulling Herbert a little closer. “How long…”

“I… I don’t remember.”

“Okay.”

Likely not more than a few minutes. However faulty memory might have been at different points throughout the day, Herbert did remember the accepted wisdom regarding fainting. He did remember his own past experiences with fainting. But he felt as if he had been lying on the brick floor of the basement for hours, as if he had tried to make a bed for himself in the cold, unyielding embrace of the earth. He felt as if Stephen’s touch was the first trace of warmth he had had in days.

Then, Stephen’s grip on his back tightened, and he kissed him roughly, so hard that their teeth clacked together and Herbert winced as the sudden jolt of pain and sudden loss of oxygen saw stars erupting behind his eyelids. Maybe Stephen had felt the same, or maybe it had more to do with the way his heart hammered under Herbert’s hands, but he pulled Herbert even tighter against him, while gentling the pressure of his mouth just a touch before drawing back with a ragged breath that sounded more like a sob.

His breathing did not become any less ragged as he began to kiss Herbert’s face frantically. His lips were at first painfully hot on Herbert’s skin, like the touch of a coal removed prematurely from the fire; only after Stephen ducked his head to press a kiss to Herbert’s jaw did the touch of his lips cease to feel as if it burned.

Herbert wanted to squirm out of his grasp. He wanted to lie there forever where it was warm and safe and he was welcome. Eventually, he found his voice enough to mutter weakly, “As if this is the first time you’ve found me—“

Stephen promptly swallowed those words, and any others that might have cared to follow after them.

It was the sort of kiss that made Herbert’s knees feel like they were made of water when he was standing. Already sitting, it was instead the sort of kiss that made Herbert sink bonelessly into Stephen’s embrace, quivering violently and immediately overwhelmed, fingers clutching at the front of his vest as if there was a chance he might walk away. Either way, it was the sort of kiss that made Herbert wish he did not possess the human’s need for oxygen, and repeated exposure had not dulled the effect even slightly. He could taste desperation like salt on Stephen’s lips. It only made him clutch all the harder at Stephen’s vest.

“And every time,” Stephen muttered breathlessly against his lips, “I’m sick with worry.” He brought a balmy, quivering hand up to Herbert’s face, stroking his cheek gently. “What else am I supposed to do?”

And for the first time since he woke up here, Herbert looked long and hard into Stephen’s eyes. Stephen was staring down at him intensely, drinking in the sight of his face as if he was a mirage, fit to disappear in the light of the sun like dew burned off by the morning heat. There was a quality Herbert had seen to his staring from time to time, a frantic tenderness that burned hotter than any touch Herbert had felt in his life, let alone from Stephen himself.

Any retort Herbert might have conjured died on his lips before it could be born. He extricated one of his hands long enough to brush his fingertips against the back of Stephen’s hand, before the chill found it again and Herbert, wincing, pulled his hand back into the warmth it had earlier enjoyed.

Stephen tried to smile at him. It wasn’t one of the hideous non-smiles Herbert knew he had painted on his own mouth during times of stress, though the smile certainly did not reach Stephen’s anxious eyes. He drew a deep breath, and then folded Herbert completely against his chest, his hand migrating to Herbert’s hair. The grains of his wool jacket pressed uncomfortably against Herbert’s cheek, but something of the warmth of flesh lingered in the cloth, and he shut his eyes and leaned his weight against someone he knew wouldn’t give way.

“How long…” Stephen’s pulse was steadily slowing, though it still felt a little fast, a little staccato. “How long has it been since you last ate something?”

Herbert frowned slightly. Under other circumstances, the question would have rankled, but under this one, he thought it better to at least try. “I…” He racked his memory, trying to come up with anything at all. “I…”

“You don’t remember,” Stephen supplied. He didn’t sound surprised. He didn’t sound surprised, at all. Another long, deep breath. “Okay. Okay.”

They sat there like that for a long time, though Herbert could not say how long, exactly. The silence and the chill pressed in on them, unwelcoming and hurrying, though Herbert was not yet in a state to flee it, and Stephen seemed unwilling to give it any heed. Stephen wound the fingers of his left hand into Herbert’s hair, ran his right slowly up and down Herbert’s back. Herbert listened to his heartbeat slow to his normal speed and rhythm, exhaustion crashing down on him like a brick wall relieved of its foundations. He was content to stay here like this for as long as Stephen was unconcerned about the weight of his body resting on his thighs.

But it could not last forever. Eventually, Stephen heaved a long, hard sigh. “Alright,” he murmured into Herbert’s hair. “I’m hungry, and you haven’t eaten in God knows how long. We need to go back upstairs.”

Herbert’s stomach churned again for just a few moments, and he bit his tongue until he could feel something warm springing up around his teeth, though it did not taste like blood. The idea of eating anything was about as attractive to him as thrusting his hand into a fire. But he wasn’t a fool. He knew he couldn’t go on without food. He certainly couldn’t _work_ without food to serve as fuel for his body and his mind. “Alright, then.”

It took a little while for Herbert to get to a point where he could stand. Humiliation churned in Herbert’s gut when it got to the point where Stephen had to put his hands on his waist and heave to get him upright and steady enough, a sensation that only intensified when Stephen took his hands away and Herbert immediately began to list from side to side, the only thing he could do to keep from falling over once again being to plant his weight far more heavily on one foot than he would have ever cared to do when he was feeling steadier. It was his own fault. It was entirely his own fault. If he had just remembered to eat something earlier, he wouldn’t have found himself in this position in the first place. You can pay immediately, or pay later, but eventually, you _have_ to pay. It was his own fault. There was no use complaining about it.

“It’s okay to need help,” Stephen murmured into his ear, as Herbert began the interminably long walk from where he had fallen to the steep and narrow staircase back up into the house.

“Is it?” Herbert muttered through gritted teeth in return, instantly regretting the sharp tone that seeped into his voice as he answered him. It was his own fault. His frustration, his anger, these were not things that should reach out and touch someone who had nothing to do with it.

“Yes,” Stephen said more firmly. Herbert felt a hand plant itself firmly against his back. “It is. There’s only so much you can do on your own. I wouldn’t ask you to move a mountain, especially not right after you’ve fainted, especially not when you can’t even remember when it is that you last ate something. I wouldn’t ask you that of you. I don’t want to see you hurt, especially not at your own hand after you’ve pushed yourself too hard.”

Herbert squeezed his eyes shut, and instantly regretted it when he opened his eyes to find the world spinning for the first few moments before he blinked it back to stillness. “That softness of yours always catches me off-guard.”

Herbert could practically feel Stephen rolling his eyes, though Stephen was still walking behind him, and he did not dare risking the unsteadiness that would have come from looking behind him. “I don’t think it’s that I’m soft, so much as you’re just too hard on yourself. I’ve thought that since we first met.”

He did not understand this world, not really. He did not understand the Miskatonic Valley, did not understand the nature of this place. That was Herbert’s fault as well, at least partially. It was always difficult to gauge just how much was safe to tell and after what point was too much knowledge for anyone’s safety, let alone the safety of an outsider who had not learned the lessons that a child of the Miskatonic Valley learned, if they were not swallowed up anyways. But Herbert had rarely tried to press, Herbert had rarely tried to explore the boundaries with Stephen. No, what he had done was shake his head and tell Stephen to leave well enough alone, on the occasions they were both confronted with that which was unknown and should stay unknown.

He had failed his own principles and done nothing to encourage curiosity or greater understanding. If anything, there had been times when Herbert had sounded like nothing quite so much as he sounded like those members of the faculty at the medical school who had blocked their research and their experiments and obliged them to conduct their research in the shadows and the back-alleys and the deserted farmhouses of Arkham. Herbert hated the way his own voice sounded under such circumstances as those, hated the weakness that infected it, hated how narrow his own horizons could become. He wondered at none of the members of the faculty ever feeling the same shame, when they did not have the excuse of knowing, of _knowing_ that what they were treading on the boundaries of could easily swallow them whole.

Herbert still did not want to kill that innocence off. It ought not still persist, even now, but he did not want to kill it.

Whatever happened, it was not going to happen tonight. Stephen did not understand this world, and he did not understand how often Herbert failed to be as hard on himself as he ought to be, and both of those things were Herbert’s own fault. Tonight was not the night to challenge those assumptions. As to the latter…

As to the latter, Herbert found he did not want to challenge that assumption, not tonight. He ought to, he really ought to; he ought to balk at it so hard that the energy of it could carry him up the staircase. Bu it felt… It was strange. It was always strange. It felt a little like being cut open, but without any of the pain involved in such.

And he ought not be focusing on it just now, anyways. Herbert stared up at the staircase with a distinct lack of enthusiasm and a strong sense of foreboding. He still had this to deal with, after all.

Even if Stephen could not see into Herbert’s face, he seemed to have guessed why Herbert had stopped. “Can you get up the stairs?”

“We’ll see,” Herbert said matter-of-factly, taking his first unsteady step onto the bottom stair, clutching the rail in a grip so tight his knuckles went white.

It was… It was…

No, this was not pleasant. Herbert had just barely been able to walk steadily across even ground, but now, all of his steadiness had failed him, along with all of his balance and all of his strength. He felt like a newborn calf or fawn—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he felt the way he had when, last summer, he had recovered just enough from his brush with typhoid to be sent home out of the hospital; he’d not really been _ready_ to leave, per se, but they had needed the bed, and he was no longer in any real danger of either death or of transmitting the disease to someone else. Walking felt like something he should not attempt, but it was something he was going to have to do, anyways, to get to any of the places he needed to go. The world would not wait, and neither would the demands of Herbert’s own body.

Now, as it had been then, Stephen was right behind him on the staircase, and Herbert could feel his eyes boring into his back. But there was a difference to it, now. Herbert had been able to get all the way up the staircase to the second floor of the Caldwell’s house, propelled partly by the pressure of that gaze upon him. Here, he was clutching at the rail with both hands, legs wobbling beneath him as if made of thin jelly, and after maybe five steps, he had to stop to _try_ to steady himself, breathing hard and blinking rapidly as if that would settle the world, as if that would make the ground feel less like it was going to slip out from under his feet.

Behind him, Herbert could hear Stephen take the quick, deep breath he had not taken then. “Okay.”

And then, Herbert let out a startled squawk he _certainly_ hadn’t let out a year ago on another staircase, when Stephen made the entirely unilateral decision to pick Herbert up off of his feet.

“Put me down!” Herbert protested, all the while latching his arms tightly around Stephen’s neck, digging his fingernails into cloth and praying the let-down wouldn’t involve some part of his body other than his feet finding the ground first.

“Hush,” Stephen told him, wrapping his left arm tightly around Herbert’s waist, while the right was tucked under his knees. “I’m not going to drop you.”

“No, you’re just going to lose your balance on the stairs, and then we’ll _both_ fall, and really crack our skulls this time.”

A chuckle rumbled deep in Stephen’s chest, though it quivered noticeably. “I’ll be sure not to land on top of you. And it’s not as long a staircase as all that.”

But to Herbert, it seemed as though their now even-slower progress up the stairs stretched out into an eternity. This wasn’t like riding in a coach or a train car or a steam bus. Here, he was acutely aware of the physical limitations, acutely aware of just how hard the ground would be if Stephen’s strength failed him and they both went tumbling to the floor. He shut his eyes, screwed them so tightly shut that no light could enter through his eyelids, but that only seemed to drag out the process even longer, and he clutched tighter at Stephen’s back, and—

“I’m really not,” Stephen murmured, “going to let you fall. Try to have a little faith in me. If only because you’re making it a little hard to breathe with your arms wrapped so tight around my neck,” he added.

Herbert eased the pressure of his arms a little, at that. But he did not open his eyes.

Not that he needed his eyes open to tell when they were finally back in the house. It was hard to mistake the sensation of being on level ground once more, as opposed to making an ascent. It was hard to mistake the slightly drier quality of the chill air. It was hard to mistake the creak of the floorboards under Stephen’s feet, as opposed to silent brick stairs. Herbert had been living here long enough to know the difference.

“You can put me down, now.”

“In a minute.”

With all the aggravation of a man who knew he wasn’t strong enough to break this grip on a good day, “ _Why_?”

“Because if you fall over in a narrow hallway, you’re wont to break your skull on the wall on the way down.”

Herbert despised that he had a point.

The house was dark and silent, besides the wind battering against the exterior walls, but Herbert would always have known its layout well enough to guess where Stephen was taking him. Thus, it came as little surprise to feel the threadbare, sagging sitting room sofa when Stephen finally elected to put him down, though Herbert still had more than a few amorphous, misshapen questions trying to push out through his mouth.

Herbert spent the time Stephen spent turning on a table lamp and trying to get a fire started in the cold hearth getting his bearings, eventually managing to sit up straight when Stephen finally got one of the logs in the fireplace to ignite. He had always had trouble getting a fire going, and normally, by the time Herbert heard the first muttered curses pass Stephen’s lips, he would have been at his side trying to help, but now, just now, weariness was settling on him like a leaden cloak, and he sat and watched in silence, instead. He thought there was a chance he might just tip into the fire if he got down there and tried to help, just now.

“That’s that taken care of,” Stephen muttered, as he picked up the poker to stoke the fire into a blaze. “You would think it would be easier to get dry kindling to light then all that.”

“I don’t think any wood here is ever truly dry,” Herbert remarked with some sympathy, trying to set some steel in his spine to keep it straight, though all he was able to find was brittle iron that felt half-eaten with rust to set in himself. It was what he had. It was what he would use, when all he wanted to do was lean forward towards the merry little flames and warm himself, when his hands had started to tremble anew.

Stephen shook his head, making a tsking noise in his mouth. “It’s ridiculous, but I think you might be right. I’ve always had too much trouble getting a fire started for it to just be a coincidence. I _never_ had this much trouble back in Chicago.”

He turned his attention away from the fire, though standing just off to the left of the fireplace, he looked for a moment as if set alight by it—but that was just a trick of the light and Herbert’s own weak, tired eyes, and Herbert was soon able to shut out such a strange, disturbing sight. (No small relief.) Stephen stared down at him for a long moment in silence, and though he was touched by the firelight, his face was obscured enough that Herbert could not make out the quality of his expression.

“Wait here for a few minutes, will you?” Stephen asked at last, a strange quality to his voice. “It’s late. I’ll make something for us to eat.”

Herbert tilted his head slightly to one side, all the while scrubbing at his hands in a vain attempt to warm them. The questions were still misshapen in his mouth, so misshapen that he couldn’t begin to tease them apart to try and figure out what they were supposed to be. But there was a feeble little protest in his mouth as well, and _that_ was something he could tease apart into something intelligible. “Shouldn’t we eat in the kitchen?”

At that, Stephen smiled weakly. He started for the door, but paused by the arm of the sofa, hand braced on the scratched wooden armrest. “Not tonight, I don’t think. Don’t worry; I’m not going to make anything too messy to eat balanced on our knees. Just…” He faltered, and Herbert did not look up to regard Stephen’s expression, but he could hear the hitched timbre in Stephen’s voice as clearly as if he had come from his own mouth. “Just wait for me here, okay? I won’t be long.”

Herbert only nodded, still not looking up into Stephen’s face. He rubbed at his hands once more, gritting his teeth and wondering irritably just how it was that the warmth could have fled from his hands so quickly once again.

Something thick and soft dropped down suddenly onto Herbert’s shoulders, making him jump. “Stephen, what—“

“You’re still cold,” Stephen murmured, tucking his jacket more securely around Herbert’s shoulders. “And you’ve made a poor patient for as long as I’ve known you. Let’s just try and keep you from getting sick at all, hmm?”

“I… I suppose so.”

Stephen gave Herbert’s shoulders a gentle squeeze, before leaving him alone in the dim, chilly sitting room. Herbert spent a couple of minutes tracking the noises coming from elsewhere in the house, Stephen heading down the stairs back into the basement, presumably to turn off the gas lamp, before hurrying back up the stairs and shutting and locking the door down into that part of the house where they never allowed any patients or visitors, where Herbert could not stand the idea of having anyone but himself or Stephen standing, with the exception of a subject, if ever they were able to reanimate a subject in their experiments with both physical and mental faculties restored. He listened to the key turning in the large, heavy lock, and let out a breath he’d not realized he was holding in.

While Stephen was in the kitchen making whatever it was he was making, Herbert let some of the rusty steel out of his spine and leaned forward towards the fire. The coffee table between himself and the fireplace would have always served as a gate between him and the popping, flickering flames slowly consuming the logs in the hearth, but there was scant distance, and he held out his hands towards the fire, drinking in the warmth with a relief bordering on the eagerness of a man who’d gone days without water and was now given a bottle full of it to drink. He felt weak. His stomach was starting to hurt badly, and taking too deep of a breath only made it hurt worse. He had little eagerness for food, though. Oh, Herbert rarely ever had any eagerness for food or for eating, though, and on an occasion like this, there was a good chance that it would all just taste as ash in his mouth, might even make him ill. But there was…

He needed food. He knew he needed food. Everything that lived needed sustenance of some sort, even the…

Thinking of him really did make Herbert feel as if he would be ill. His eyes darted to the sitting room windows, and the curtains were where he had left them, drawn firmly over the glass. Herbert drew a shuddering breath, tried to put all thoughts of that man from his mind, and drew those deep, shuddering breaths until his pulse had finally evened out enough nausea no longer seemed like an imminent concern.

Herbert knew he needed some sort of sustenance. He wasn’t the sort of fool who forgot that for longer than it took for his body to remind him in no uncertain terms that he _did_ need food, though admittedly, his body did need to remind him more often than most people’s did. He just… He just didn’t enjoy it.

Herbert drew his hands back to himself, folding them inside the folds of cloth from where Stephen’s jacket, far too big for Herbert to have ever worn without looking completely ridiculous, though it served well as a makeshift blanket. He turned his head down and to the side, breathing in deeply, slowly. It smelled like him. Herbert never realized how comforting a smell that was, until Stephen wasn’t standing beside him. Oh, the smell of sickness on his skin wasn’t comforting, but Stephen had been blessed with remarkably robust health—he had been sick maybe a handful of times in all the time that Herbert had known him, and Herbert rarely got the ineffable but unmistakable scent of illness rising off of his skin, even after he had been to visit a house where everyone within was ill—and this night was no exception to that. He sat in a silence punctuated only by distant, battering wind and the occasional pop of sparks and collapsing logs, and breathed deeply, quietly.

“Herbert?”

Herbert jerked his head up at the sound of Stephen’s voice. Stephen was holding two plates in his hands, holding one out for him to take. “Here, go ahead and take this. I’ll get our glasses; don’t wait for me to start eating.”

Probably better not to tell Stephen that by the time he came back, he’d likely find that Herbert had barely eaten any of what he had prepared. That wasn’t something Herbert thought Stephen would have responded too well to, under the circumstances. Herbert wasn’t interested in causing distress. He thought he’d already caused enough for one night.

The food Stephen prepared, predictably for the scant amount of time he had been away from the sitting room, was quite simple. Toast with some dark jam—looked like blackberry; Herbert didn’t think they actually had any other sort of jam on hand, at present—and what was most likely _cold_ sausage. He wasn’t going to complain. There was nothing that could have been put in front of him that would have actually made him enthusiastic to eat. But it all looked like something he would be able to get down without much trouble, something that was unlikely to hit a pitifully empty stomach and make him feel ill.

The thing was, Herbert wasn’t terribly fond of blackberry jam. It wasn’t that the taste offended him, per se; he did not mind the taste of blackberries. But the seeds in blackberries and in blackberry jam were beyond irritating to deal with at the best of times, and now, he found himself chomping down on them in the vain hope that he could obliterate them all before any could get stuck in between his teeth. Vain hope, indeed, and Herbert was already speculating on how many times he would wake up tonight with the strange feeling in his mouth of a seed half-dislodged, but still partially stuck in between two of his teeth.

As he had predicted, it all tasted like ash to him, though he was acutely aware of the seeds and the little hard bits in the sausage that were even now seeking gaps in between his teeth to get stuck in. So it was with some relief that Herbert marked the gentle tread of footsteps against the creaking floorboards, and it was with a faint smile that Herbert accepted the glass of water proffered to him.

“Are you feeling very stressed?” Herbert asked pointedly, upon eyeing the glass Stephen had poured for himself, containing an amber liquid that was rather markedly _not_ water.

Stephen smiled wanly at him in response. “Even before I found you like that, it was—“ he took a sip from the glass, lip curling as he did so; ah, he always complained about the quality of what alcohol could be found in Bolton, and yet, he still drank it “—a very, _very_ long day.”

Perhaps the fresh intake of food was already working on him, for Herbert found curiosity stoked to something resembling a glimmer of a spark. Or perhaps it was just that he was trying to avoid eating the food. He could not be certain, but either way, he asked quizzically, softly, “What was it that happened that’s driven you to drink?”

A sharp, rueful laugh hit the air. “Let me tell you all about it. I’m sure you’ll find it all as ridiculous as I do.”

And Herbert listened to him in something approaching contentment, though weariness still held too much power for it to be truly so, as Stephen began to rattle all of the strange and ridiculous things that had happened to him today even before he was kneeling on the floor trying to wake Herbert up. It was a longer list than Herbert had expected, encompassing everything from patients severely behind on their payments to another attempt by the mill to employ their services without even _trying_ to pay them what their services would have actually been worth to being stopped by a policeman for something that thankfully turned out to be quite unrelated to anything either Stephen or Herbert had been getting up to since coming to live in Bolton, to even being asked by a patient to remove a live snake from her washtub.

“You refused _that_ request, I hope.”

“About as strongly as I could without actually swearing at her. She still didn’t take it well.”

“Shocking.”

“Me or her?”

“ _Her_.”

Stephen laughed under his breath and, having finished his supper, set his plate down on the coffee table and wrapped his arm around Herbert’s shoulders, drawing him in close and setting his cheek against Herbert’s hair. “I’m glad you agree,” he said in a low voice. “She yelled at me all the way out her door. I think it might have been the strangest thing that’s happened to me since we moved here.”

And may he experience nothing stranger than that. Herbert would be more than happy for Stephen to experience nothing stranger than that, for as long as he lived here.

Eventually, Stephen ran out of things to say about his day, to Herbert’s mingled disappointment and relief—he would have liked to hear more, but it was probably a good thing that there hadn’t been any more, for the sake of Stephen’s blood pressure, if nothing else. The silence that earlier had seemed dismal and almost foreboding to Herbert was now considerably more companionable, something he could sink into, rather than finding himself grappling with the urge to retreat from it. (Silence was so much more bearable when it was not something he was obliged to endure alone.)

And eventually, even Herbert was done with his supper, though the toast was stone cold by the time he took his last, ginger bite, and the jam was downright congealed. He set his plate down on the coffee table and, completely abandoning any attempt to sit up straight, settled himself into the crook of Stephen’s arm, greeting eagerly the warmth of the warm body next to him.

“So…” There was a wobbly note in Stephen’s voice, vacillating between irony and genuine interest, the latter injected still with unmistakable wryness. “How was your day?”

Herbert sighed. He had managed to forget, but he thought he might have more notes he needed to take down regarding one of his patients. “Long,” he admitted in an undertone. With little enthusiasm, “And unfortunately, not over yet. I’ve more work to do before the night goes.”

At that, Stephen stiffened, lifting his head where he had been resting it against Herbert’s hair to look at him intently. “Can’t it wait?” he asked, and there was a faint wheedling note in his voice that Herbert had heard there a few times before, though he had never quite been able to put a name to the emotions it inspired.

“Not if I don’t want to wind up too far behind in my work for my own comfort—or my patients’, for that matter.”

“Just one night, though,” Stephen pressed, the wheedling note in his voice stronger, now, and intertwined with a concern that was by now nearly as familiar to Herbert as Stephen himself, a concern he always found himself caught between warring urges to reject and embrace. “You’re so worn out, you didn’t even complain about the food; _God_ , I’ve never heard someone complain about his own cooking the way you do, and you’re hardly any gentler on _mine_. Can’t it wait just one night, so you can actually rest properly? You are _so_ hard on yourself.” Stephen brought his right hand to cradle Herbert’s cheek. Warm hand against Herbert’s still-cold skin, thumb rubbing a familiar track against cheekbone, he smiled weakly. “It worries me.”

Herbert swallowed hard, just barely resisting the urge to look away. Touch had become familiar, touch was no longer foreign. Concern was…

He was being a child, to even want to balk at it. He could not stop himself wanting to balk.

But there were times when he could find the thread of emotion in his own heart that would let him embrace it, even if guilt did linger.

Herbert put his arms around Stephen’s neck and kissed him. “One night,” he agreed.


End file.
